A closer look
Motorola engineer Martin Cooper explicitly credited the communicators used by Captain Kirk and his crew in the original 1960s Star Trek television series as the direct inspiration for inventing the world's very first mobile cellular telephone. The futuristic prop, featuring a flip-open design and wireless vocal communication, planted the seed in Cooper's mind that humanity should not be hopelessly tethered to landline cords when making phone calls. It is deeply amusing that the fundamental technology currently destroying our attention spans, ruining our posture, and allowing us to endlessly doomscroll on social media while sitting on the toilet was birthed from a low-budget sci-fi show about exploring the galaxy. Gene Roddenberry dreamed of a utopian future where enlightened humans used advanced technology to peacefully communicate across the stars, but instead we just used his visionary concept to send unprompted anatomical photos to strangers on dating applications
